The Kennebec plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Mostly sunny
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
−23° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −19° in 1940.
Kennebec’s center stands about 1,690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,630 ft to 1,790 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Medicine Butte, about 2,210 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace Deposits (coarse-detrital, clay), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 40×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Kennebec reaches the Gulf of America by way of Medicine Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,220 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Sharpe, Lake Francis Case and Lewis and Clark Lake.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Kennebec; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kennebec has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 40 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 21 inches of water.
On November 14 Kennebec normally reaches 48° and falls to 23°. The record high is 78°, in 1942; the record low −23°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1927.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Kennebec, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
